Jim Murray, America's No. 1 sports columnist, suffers a detached retina and loses his eyesight the day before the 1979 Super Bowl in Miami, Florida. Despite the best efforts of eye specialist to restore his vision, Murray is thrust into a darkened world, unable to see anything except shadows a couple feet away. From January to late June, he is confined to his house in Bel-Air, unable to read the newspaper, drive his car or write his column.

As the weeks, and the hope of recovery pass, he figures his career is over.
But, with the encouragement of his wife, Gerry, and the help of a young sports department staffer named John Scheibe, who is assigned to be his "eyes," Murray makes a comeback. With the golden Los Angeles sports scene as a backdrop, "On the Road With Jim Murray: Baseball and the Summer of '79" examines Murray's remarkable return to the press box and to the front page of over 200 syndicated newspaper sports sections. It also offers a rare look at the sports department's staff and its daily endeavor to publish an award-winning product.

The story is enriched with excerpts from some of Murray's columns from that era, stories from his days when he covered Hollywood for Time magazine and it examines the struggles that both he and Scheibe encounter along their road to baseball's playoffs, World Series and ultimately Murray having his eyesight restored before winning national sportswriter of the year honors.

INSIGHTS FROM A BLIND SPORTSWRITER

At the height of his career, Jim Murray—who had been named national sportswriter
of the year 13 times, and was a Pulitzer Prize winner and a syndicated columnist
at the Los Angeles Times—suddenly went blind. Plunged into darkness, he had to find
a way to write his column, which was printed five days a week and syndicated in
more than 200 newspapers. He had to do this without being able to see the game he
was covering, the person he was interviewing or—most importantly—the words he was writing.

Urged on by his wife, Gerry, Murray found a way to write his column: through the
eyes of an inexperienced yet enthusiastic copyboy.

Enter John Scheibe, whose On the Road With Jim Murray: Baseball and the Summer of ’79 tells the extraordinary story of his collaboration with an extraordinary man
and one of the most remarkable twists of fate in sportswriting history.